I recommend every one who is interested in writing Star Wars fanfic to read Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/dp/158297103X
I recommend every one who is interested in writing Star Wars fanfic to read Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/dp/158297103X
You don't need to write anything; it's already been written: You Just Don't Understand by Deborah Tannen. Get two copies and each of you read one.
If you won't read the book, here's the super super distilled version:
say what you mean, be blunt, don't beat around the bush, don't hope he'll figure out what you mean; if you're not sure what you mean, don't say it until you are
ask for what you want - don't assume he'll read your mind - he can't.
take what he says at face value - men don't code their messages - he means what he says.
Read the book
A lot of people swear by Wheelock's Latin; it can be obtained for $16 on Amazon. I took the Cambridge course(the first two books, but online, I think?), however I believe it's a bit more expensive.
Wheelock uses original Latin texts, Cambridge uses a made up story about a family. Wheelock might also be a bit heavy; Cambridge was pretty easy, at least as far as I got.
Also worth mentioning is lingua latina per se illustrata, which is a book entirely in Latin, and you pretty much just learn by immersion. PDFs can be found with minimal work.
This is the second similar appeal I’ve seen in two days. Here’s the recommendation I gave earlier: read this book, and encourage him to. https://www.amazon.com/You-Just-Dont-Understand-Conversation/dp/0060959622/ref=nodl_#
Romance is actually very simple. All romance novels follow a similar formula. To write effective romance, you need to understand two things: romantic story arc, and how to write emotion and conflict.
I’m going to point you to two resources I recommend to all my romance writer clients:
First is a book called Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes (a fellow romance editor). It costs less than $6 on Amazon and you can read it cover to cover in less than an hour. RTB will explain the formula for romantic story arc. Once you understand that, you can just plug your chosen setting, characters, etc. into the formula.
The second is Writing With Emotion, Tension, and Conflict: by Cheryl St. John (a romance writer). This book will teach you how to take your emotional conflict to the next level to really gut-punch your readers right in the feels.
Now go wrench some hearts, little fledgling romance writer. You got this. 👊🏼
You should join the latin subreddit! There's a lot of religious people on there but there's also really good latin stuff.
I learned from Wheelock's Latin, but I hear that the Cambridge Latin Course is very good as well. I've been thinking about going over the basics again.
I get the itch to translate the first few pages de Bellum Gaulicum every few years or so.
I personally recommend reading "How to write science fiction and fantasy" by Orson Scott Card.
Lots of great advice in there, esp. about what NOT to do, rookie mistakes, etc.
And as a sci fi author, don't feel shy with starting with fanfiction, I started there. (No, you can't read it. Too embarrassing ��)
TVTropes is also a great resource for writing, but it requires great willforce not to get sucked into opening 100s of tabs ��
> My friend...what is a chair?
If you're interested in learning more about abstract concept formation such as understanding how we know what a "chair" is, I recommend reading this essential book on the subject: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
100%, and not just vocabulary. Much of what makes English syntax so difficult for non native speakers is from "borrowing", too.
Great book from a great author on the subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944
While you’re not dealing with a dead language, a common self study book for Latin is Wheelock’s Latin. Btw good luck with your thesis, I was briefly interested in that language but turned away once I found few resources on it.
Asterios Polyp is probably my favorite graphic novel. It deals with romance and love, but in a very real way. It includes all the ups and downs of relationships, and uses color, along with the style of the art, to beautifully portray both the unity and division that people face when part of a couple. I found it painful at times, but so moving.
Have you read Romancing the Beat? It's very helpful and shows the different stages of the romance. Usually both the hero and the heroine have a problem with love that has kept them from finding anyone. The first 0-15% of the book is set-up for the normal world and everything changes at the inciting incident. You can still have the meet-cute in the set-up but you are showing their normal world. Does that make sense? Here is the book. https://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Beat-Structure-Romance-Kissing-ebook/dp/B01DSJSURY
Modern English is an interesting blend of its West Germanic roots, with Norman Latin influence, and vestiges of Celtic language constructs.
Great book on the subject by the great John McWhorter if you are interested:
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944
> So it’s not human consciousness that makes someone a person, it’s “having had at one point a self aware human consciousness” that makes someone a person.
I am saying that it is indeed, possession of human-level consciousness that makes one a person, but a person can fall asleep and still maintain possession of its personality. (That's why when Jack falls asleep and you wake him up, he is still Jack and not some completely different dude named Ralph.)
>When does one become self aware?
Sometime after birth, perhaps months later. At birth a newborn's consciousness is at the same level of an animal's or lower. It does not possess thoughts in anything similar to how we have words, but rather emotions.
We are subject to huge amounts of sensory perceptions as our data about the world. An animal's mind is able to separate out those sensations and make some sense of them. Infants have to do that, too, and it's their first task. Compared to an animal, a human's mind can go further and understand those sensations in much greater detail and determine entities' distinguishing characteristics, creating abstract concepts (you may have never seen a certain model of car before, but when you see it you know it's a car because it possesses the attributes that define what a car is) and later much more abstract and higher level concepts that build on lower level concepts (such as the concept of individual rights, which is extremely abstract).
If anyone reading this is seriously interested in the issue of concept formation, I recommend the book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology
Wheelock's Latin was the textbook that I was assigned in college. It's used pretty regularly as far as I can tell in classical education settings.
>I also noticed the show scripts are written by an all-woman team.
The showrunner responsible for the first two seasons of the Netflix adaptation (Chris Van Dusen) is male. He is the creator and primary writer for the first two seasons of the show. Jess Brownell will be leading the next two seasons.
Men can write about, and for, women just fine -- there are a lot of male romance authors out there writing under female or genderless pseudonyms because doing so is part of their marketing approach (they sell better). The reverse is also true, women can write men in a way that is completely believable.
Writing is a business as much as it is a craft. It's important for writers to know who they are marketing to, and to write for expectations of that audience. That means market research. That means writing in the correct voice. Hitting the correct beats (romance readers can be ruthless if this particular need isn't met, hence popular primers like this).
If skilled writing feels gendered, then there's a decent chance that it's meant to -- because that's what sells the best to the audience it is intended for.
I think they try to keep them off the internet because you can buy them as a book. It looks pretty nice and isn't that expensive.
There are books that explore the dynamics of conversation and the general ways that makes and females talk by Deborah Tannen. She explains that men often talk to dominate or compete with other people. Women tend to talk to bring people to their level. There is an idea that women talk more than men. However, that’s men tend to talk more than women just not at home because they don’t feel the need to compete with a spouse. Women tend to defer to men in public but ask men to meet them where they are at in private. Deborah is a researcher linguistic has teaches academically on the way we communicate. I would recommend reading You Just Don’t Understand.
https://www.amazon.com/You-Just-Dont-Understand-Conversation/dp/0060959622
I’m female so I don’t think I have a ton to contribute, but I will throw this out there: some sociologists have characterized men’s socializing patterns as “report” focused, where you’re telling each other about your skills, resources, etc. The goal isn’t necessarily to prove that you’re “better” than the other guys, though for sure there’s status jostling, but more to prove that you’re useful and that you have a purpose in the group. Women’s socializing patterns are “rapport” focused, where you’re communicating belonging and similarity within the group. The goal is to make everyone feel connected. Women can certainly do the status-jostling too, but it’s usually more underhanded and subtle.
Part of why you might be so much more comfortable with women is that you aren’t sure what male conversations are supposed to be about. I can’t really help you there XD but maybe what you’re perceiving as “one-upping” is an effort to seem valuable. Or it could be actual one-upping. XD
You may find it helpful to read “You Just Don’t Understand; Women and Men In Conversation” by Deborah Tannen. Since Tannen is a woman and I imagine she figured mostly women would read her book, she spends more time explaining the guy’s side of things than the women’s side of things. For you though, that might be a bonus. It may help you understand what guys are trying to get out of a conversation, as well as what you like so much about talking with women.
>I saw someone break it down to “Latinx is the English word for/spelling of Latine”
That is certainly not the case.
Latinx is a made-up word trying to make latino(a) more inclusive for people who don't conform to traditional genders (I'm too old to keep up with the lingo, sue me). I haven't the faintest idea why they couldn't just use Latin, like someone else pointed out.
In no translation from Spanish to English have I ever seen a trailing "e" become an "x". That's just fantasy.
I suspect the explanation is a very poor attempt to tack on a rationale after the fact.
So no, this isn't some "rule" in English.
And by the way, English's contradictory rules exist because of the history of the language, starting with the Gaelic influence (from the Celtic peoples originally in the British Isles) on Old High German (the language of the Saxon invaders). Followed by the Viking conquests of the British Isles (here comes Old High Norse), which were followed by the Norman conquests (add Norman French). I probably forgot a few other influences in there. Then add in the fact that all languages evolve and change over time (look up the great vowel shift), and you get the magnificent bastard tongue^(this is a great book, btw) we today call English.
>English is dumb in so many ways.
It's not dumb, its a wonderful hodgepodge of different cultures and languages condensed down, sprinkled with ideas and words from all over the world, and packaged into the brilliant (if a tad messy) language we are speaking here and now.
Anyway, enough from me, have a good day.
I found this book very helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Beat-Structure-Romance-Kissing-ebook/dp/B01DSJSURY
If you're into philosophy, then the greatest deconstruction and denonciation of post-modernism that I've ever read was Ayn Rand's "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". In her typical writing style, she makes sure to be extremely explicit and methodical, to the point of sounding repetitive, to make sure that she discredits post-modernism and other anti-epistemological philosophies from every single possible angle.
Duolingo is pretty shit for Latin bro imma be real w u. The grammar system in Latin is so formulaic that just learning vocab (what Duolingo does) won’t get you anywhere, even if you can figure out some of the grammar by doing different modules. I recommend buying Wheelock’s Latin https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226
You're welcome, zoomer. If you haven't read it already, you might enjoy John McWhorter's <em>Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: the Untold History of English</em>.
It's the most fundamental, metaphysical male/female difference. Men are outer oriented, women are inner oriented. Men's conversations are about external things (ideas, events), women's are about how things affect them (feelings).
You should read this book. It should seriously be considered to be put on the sidebar.
How my skin feels only affects me. No one besides me cares about that. We care about how we affect the external world. Especially when those effects benefit women or society as a whole.
Women care more about how things affect them. How does this make me feel? Does this improve my mood or not? What do the other people (women) around me feel about it?
It wouldn't occur to men that is even a priority: it's alien. Thats why I said you were "so close but so far." You weren't off base but it seemed like the implications of having to introduce basic skin care to Men weren't apparent. It literally wouldn't occur to us that our skin matters (or that we're permitted to care about it considering what our job has been throughout history).
The family in the igloo needs food. All that's available are whales. So get in your kayak and figure out how to get blubber without being smashed.
If Men cared about how their skin felt, or whether they were cold, or frightened, or didn't know where they were going, or how long they'd be gone, or whether they might not make it back more than he cared about feeding his wife and baby, the human race stops right there.
If women cared more about their man making it back or his skin or his hair than whether he took down that whale, the human race stops.
The cultures that cared about men's skin died out to the cultures that didn't.
This conversation shows how far apart the genders are. We are so, soooo different lol.
Whereas you cannot go wrong with any Frank Ching book as already suggested ( I’d go for ‘form space and order’ ) , if you are looking for a super light read ( and perhaps a little tongue in cheek humour ) may I recommend to you 101 things I learned in architecture school.
Yup. It's main origins are Germanic, but it borrows vocabulary from Latin based languages.
A fascinating read is "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" which is a pretty accurate description.
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-Bastard-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944